SSL & HTTPS
Free SSL with every plan, and an upgrade only when you actually need one
Every site we host gets a certificate that costs nothing and renews itself. Wildcard and EV certificates sit on the shelf for the day you need subdomain cover or a verified company name.
$0
What the standard certificate costs
Auto
Issued and renewed for you
256-bit
Strength of the encryption
$1.5M
Warranty behind an EV certificate
Why It Matters
Encryption, trust, the padlock: all of it covered
A certificate is not a box to tick — it protects what your visitors type and tells them the site is safe to use.
The padlock people look for
Serve your pages over HTTPS and a browser paints the padlock into the address bar. Leave it out and what visitors read is 'Not secure'.
Traffic scrambled on the way through
Logins, form entries and payments get encoded on the trip between a visitor's browser and our servers, which leaves anyone eavesdropping with nothing worth reading.
Renewal you never think about
Long before the expiry date arrives, the certificate reissues itself without fuss. No padlock lapses. No checkout starts throwing errors on a Saturday morning.
A nudge in the rankings
Encrypted pages get preference from search engines, which is how an HTTPS site ends up above a twin that never bothered getting a certificate.
Proof of who you are
Take an EV certificate and your company goes through vetting first, after which the verified name is written into the certificate itself. That is worth paying for when people are typing card numbers into your pages.
Fitted before you ask
The minute your domain's DNS points our way, the free certificate installs itself. Nothing to buy. Nothing to configure afterwards.
Free On Every Plan
The standard certificate, and no catch in it
Every plan we sell brings a certificate at no charge, whether that plan is shared, WordPress, reseller, VPS or dedicated. It installs on its own, stretches over your domain and the subdomains beneath it, and renews without a word from you. The padlock stays exactly where it was.
- Covers your domain and its subdomains
- Issued as soon as the DNS points here
- Reissued ahead of every expiry
- No cheap first year that jumps later
Upgrades
When wildcard or EV earns its money back
Where the free certificate genuinely falls short, a paid one picks up the work. A wildcard secures every subdomain you have under a single certificate. An EV certificate writes your verified company name into the certificate details, which earns its place on shops, membership sites, and anywhere sensitive information changes hands.
- Domain-validated (DV) options
- Wildcard cover across every subdomain
- Extended Validation for the strongest signal
- Warranty cover up to $1.5 million
Buying One
Most sites have no business buying a certificate
The free certificate on your plan uses the same strong encryption a paid one does, and it renews itself. There are two reasons to pay, and only two.
A free certificate already sits on every plan: it renews itself, shows the padlock to visitors and runs modern TLS. For an ordinary site, or an ordinary shop, that is the entire requirement. We would rather say so out loud than take your money for something that changes nothing.
Two jobs sit beyond a free certificate. Covering unlimited subdomains under one certificate is the first of them, and that means Wildcard. Nor can it carry your verified company identity with a warranty standing behind it, and that job belongs to Extended Validation, which pays for itself mostly where you handle payments or logins and want the strongest trust signal money can buy.
Want a warranty-backed single-domain certificate without the wildcard cover on top? One can still be issued on request. Ask us, and we'll give you an honest read on whether it does anything at all for you.
Wildcard SSL Certificate
A single certificate covering your domain plus all subdomains under it
$169.99/yr
the renewal price is the same · covers every subdomain
- Validation
- Domain (DV)
- Issued
- Usually same day
- Warranty
- $10,000
- Secures
- *.yourdomain
- One certificate covers the whole lot, subdomains included
- Coverage written as *.yourdomain
- HTTPS and the padlock on all of them at once
- A $10,000 relying-party warranty stands behind it
- Worth buying if your app keeps creating new subdomains
- Our team fits it for you at no extra charge
- Issued the same day, in most cases
- 256-bit encryption on a 2048-bit key
- Install it on as many servers as you like
- Reissue it as often as you need
Orders are rung up on Hosting Cheap, which is the billing platform behind our checkout.
EV SSL Certificate
Your business gets checked, then named and vouched for inside the certificate
$379.99/yr
the renewal price is the same · highest assurance
- Validation
- Extended (EV)
- Issued
- 1–3 days
- Warranty
- $1,500,000
- Secures
- 1 domain
- Extended Validation shows there's a real firm behind the website
- The certificate carries your checked company name
- Nothing on sale signals trust more strongly than this
- A $1,500,000 relying-party warranty stands behind it
- Puts shoppers at ease at the checkout and login box
- We walk you through every step of validation
- 256-bit encryption on a 2048-bit key
- Every major browser trusts it
- Reissue it as often as you need
- A site seal for the footer
Orders are rung up on Hosting Cheap, which is the billing platform behind our checkout.
Once you have checked out, validation and installation are handled at our end: usually inside a day for Wildcard, and a few days for EV, because EV means verifying the company standing behind the site.
How It Works
Secure from day one, and nothing for you to set up
- 1
Point the domain at us
Put the domain on your account, then aim its DNS at our servers. Everything else after that happens without your hands.
- 2
We issue it for you
Once the domain checks out, the free certificate is requested and installed by us. No button for you to press, no files to edit.
- 3
It looks after itself from there
Ahead of each expiry the certificate reissues itself, so HTTPS and the padlock hold steady while you ignore the calendar entirely.
In The Box
What comes with your certificate
- A free certificate on every plan
- Issued and installed while you do nothing at all
- Your domain and its subdomains covered
- Renewal handled automatically
- Force-HTTPS redirects if you want them
- Current TLS 1.3 encryption
- Upgrades available: DV, wildcard and EV
- Trusted by every mainstream browser
- Certificate prices with nothing tacked on
- People on support at any hour
Questions
SSL certificates, explained
Is SSL really included on every plan?
It is. A certificate rides along with every hosting plan at no charge, issued on your behalf and kept current for as long as the site sits here.
What exactly does a paid certificate do that the free one cannot?
Encryption and the padlock come from the free one, and for most sites that is the whole job done. Paid certificates bring two extras. A wildcard puts every subdomain under a single certificate. An EV certificate carries a vetted check on your company identity, which browsers and shoppers alike read as a stronger signal.
Will visitors see the padlock?
With the certificate live, browsers display the padlock and your pages travel over HTTPS. Where no valid certificate exists, the address bar carries a 'Not secure' warning to every visitor instead.
Do I have to renew it myself?
No. A free certificate reissues itself before expiry, with no prompting from your side at all. For paid wildcard and EV certificates a reminder goes out ahead of the validation window, so the cover does not run dry.
Does HTTPS slow a site down?
Not by any amount you would ever notice. Modern TLS has been optimised hard, and HTTPS is a requirement for HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, protocols that tend to make a site quicker rather than slower.
Can one certificate cover all my subdomains?
Your main domain and its subdomains are already covered by the free certificate. Run a great many subdomains, though, and a wildcard gathers all of them under one certificate instead.
Hand your visitors a reason to trust the page.
Every plan carries a free certificate that renews itself, with wildcard and EV cover waiting for the day you need to prove who you are.
See Hosting PlansBrowsers stopped being polite about missing encryption years ago. Every domain here gets a certificate at no cost, fitted and renewed without a reminder in anyone's calendar. Behind the counter: NVMe storage, LiteSpeed caching, redundant our London datacentre and engineers who are awake at three in the morning.
Stocked for owners locking down what visitors send them: free SSL on every domain, a free transfer from your old host, automatic daily backups, and no surprises between the price tag and the invoice.
Free certificates, and paid ones when you need them
The free certificate covers the domain and its subdomains, installs itself and renews on schedule. Paid certificates are on the shelf for projects that want a wildcard across many subdomains, a longer warranty or an organisation-validated seal — issued quickly, and installed by us if you would rather not.
Underneath, every certificate gets identical treatment — NVMe drives instead of spinning disks, LiteSpeed instead of a plain web server, and a 99.9% uptime figure written into the terms.
When paying for a certificate makes sense
Billing ought to be boring: one figure, stated up front, repeated at renewal, with promotions marked plainly instead of buried in a footnote. Licences and issued certificates go live immediately, so refunds there are looked at case by case, while any hosting bought alongside keeps its full 30-day money-back guarantee.
Basic encryption is never an upsell here; it is fitted to every domain on every plan. Paid certificates are priced on the page with what they add spelled out, so you can judge whether you actually need one.
How certificates are issued and renewed
Issue and renewal are automated on the platform, with the certificate installed and the site moved to HTTPS without downtime. Renewals run well before expiry, and a failed one raises an alert with our engineers rather than only with you.
The unglamorous work — patching, monitoring, hardware replacement, filtering — is in the price and done by us. That is most of what you are actually buying.
- Free certificate on every domain, auto-renewed
- Wildcard and OV certificates when a project needs one
- Watched minute by minute from our network desk
- Conditioned power and more than one network path
Worth Knowing
What else you get in the box
No expiry-day surprises
Renewal runs early and alerts our engineers if it fails. Nobody should learn about it from a browser warning.
Someone at the counter
The queue is staffed by engineers around the clock, and answers usually arrive within 15 minutes.
Same price next year
Plans renew at the figure you joined on, with no second price waiting in year two.
99.9% uptime, in writing
Redundant our London datacentre, automatic failover and monitoring that pages an engineer before you notice.
A panel that makes sense
The controls are where you would expect them, which is most of what a good panel has to do.
Move up without moving out
Outgrowing a tier is a click in the panel, not a migration and a weekend.
Starting Out
From order to live in three steps
- 1
Compare the tiers
Point the domain at your account.
- 2
Connect the domain
The free certificate is issued and installed for you.
- 3
Publish
Need a wildcard or an OV seal instead? Order it and we fit that one.
On the Shelf
Also included, no extra charge
- Hosting bought alongside keeps its 30-day guarantee
- HTTPS fitted without a manual install
- Renewals handled automatically, before expiry
- Built for owners locking down what visitors send them
- Free SSL on every domain you host
- Migration done by our engineers, no charge
- Automatic daily backups on every plan
- a 99.9% uptime target credited against the SLA
Still Asking
Other questions that keep coming up
Is the free certificate as secure as a paid one?
The encryption is identical — same strength, same browser trust. Paid certificates add organisation validation, wildcard coverage across subdomains and a warranty, which some businesses need for legal or procurement reasons. For most sites the free one is the right answer and we will tell you so.
How quickly can I get started with SSL certificates?
Straight away. Orders provision themselves, and if you would rather we set things up, the desk is staffed at whatever hour you happen to be reading this.
Will the price change at renewal?
The same tag, the same amount. We do not run an introductory price that quietly doubles once you have settled in.
What if I change my mind about SSL certificates?
Licences and issued certificates activate on the spot, so refunds there are settled case by case — write to the desk within 7 days and we will work something out. Hosting bought at the same time keeps its full 30-day money-back guarantee regardless.
Read next
Secure Hosting
Hardened accounts, DDoS filtering, daily copies.
Web Hosting
cPanel on NVMe from $2.42/mo, SSL and the move included.
Domain Names
Names from $2.99 with the renewal price on the tag.
Pulled from the Resource Library
How to Install an SSL Certificate
From issue to padlock, with the redirect step written in.
What is an SSL Certificate?
That padlock explained: what it proves, and what it plainly doesn't.
Let's Encrypt vs Paid SSL
The point where free is genuinely enough, and where paid earns its fee.